A Couple Of Days On Gulangyu

I had never even heard of Gulangyu (鼓浪嶼) until my friend asked if I wanted to visit there.  In the end, it turned out to be one of my favourite places on our Xiamen trip.

We took a quick ferry ride over to Gulangyu, but it was already dark when we arrived, so it took a bit of navigating to find our hotel.  Once we dropped off our luggage, we went back out to explore the island and found that most places were still open. 

One of the first places we stopped into was this souvenir store where everyone was writing postcards to themselves.  Along one wall were a whole bunch of cubby holes labelled with dates.  You can place your finished postcards into the cubby hole of the date you want the postcard to be mailed out.  It was a pretty neat idea.

On our first morning on Gulangyu, we began to explore the island in full and was very surprised to find that there were not that many people on the island.  Gulangyu is supposed to be a huge domestic tourism spot, but yet everywhere we went was very pleasant in that we didn’t have to deal with crowds.  Thinking back to our first couple of days in Xiamen, it was the same thing, so perhaps I was just used to the congestion of Guangzhou by this point.

I was interested in seeing some of the more cultural parts of the island, and made my way towards the Koxinga Statue, which is perched on top of a hill on one side of the island.  Koxinga (鄭成功) is a famous military leader who devoted the last years of his life to fighting the Manchurians.  Since the enormous statue is on a hill, the views offered from the top should have been quite nice.  However, there really wasn’t much to see as the island is not all that developed.  I was much more impressed with the white bridges at the bottom of the statue.  I have always loved seeing these types of bridges in Wushu films. 

We didn’t have too much time planned out for Gulangyu, but the day and a half we spent there was a great way to absorb some culture and take in some much needed relaxation.

For more photos, please see my  Photo Gallery of Gulangyu.